This two-volume set constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Industrial and Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, IEA/AIE-98, held in Benicassim, Castellon, Spain, in June 1998.The two volumes present a total of 187 revised full papers selected from 291 submissions. In accordance with the conference, the books are devoted to new methodologies, knowledge modeling and hybrid techniques. The papers explore applications from virtually all subareas of AI including knowledge-based systems, fuzzyness and uncertainty, formal reasoning, neural information processing, multiagent systems, perception, robotics, natural language processing, machine learning, supervision and control systems, etc..

What is computational intelligence (CI)? Traditionally, CI is understood as a collection of methods from the ?elds of neural networks (NN), fuzzy logic and evolutionary computation. Various de?nitions and opinions exist, but what belongs to CI is still being debated; see, e.g., [1–3]. More recently there has been a proposal to de?ne the CI not in terms of the tools but in terms of challenging problems to be solved [4]. With this edited volume I have made an attempt to give a representative sample of contemporary CI activities in automotive applications to illustrate the state of the art. While CI researchand achievements in some specialized ?elds described (see, e.g., [5, 6]), this is the ?rst volume of its kind dedicated to automotive technology. As if re?ecting the general lack of consensus on what constitutes the ?eld of CI, this volume 1 illustrates automotive applications of not only neural and fuzzy computations which are considered to be the “standard” CI topics, but also others, such as decision trees, graphicalmodels, Support Vector Machines (SVM), multi-agent systems, etc. This book is neither an introductory text, nor a comprehensive overview of all CI research in this area. Hopefully, as a broad and representative sample of CI activities in automotive applications, it will be worth reading for both professionals and students. When the details appear insu?cient, the reader is encouraged to consult other relevant sources provided by the chapter authors.

The rich palette of topics set out in this book provides a sufficiently broad overview of the developments in the field of quality control. By providing detailed information on various aspects of quality control, this book can serve as a basis for starting interdisciplinary cooperation, which has increasingly become an integral part of scientific and applied research.

Based on more than 10 years of practical experience in the field of supply chain management, Oliver Münch indicates that in favor of sustainability within the supply chain the paradox purchasing savings can and should be substituted with the approach of the First-Time-Right Procurement. This dissertation subjects the monetary measurement of purchasing savings to a critical examination and questions whether it still applies. It indicates that monetary purchasing savings exert a negative impact on sustainable company success. In order to achieve a long-term sustainable success, it is proposed that the monetary measurement of purchasing savings can be replaced by measuring process times within the procurement organization.